


love me like the world is ending

by zombeesknees



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 00:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16902228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombeesknees/pseuds/zombeesknees
Summary: Dancing at a fancy ball leads to some interrrresting thoughts. | Written many moons ago on LJ.





	love me like the world is ending

She wore a pale blue dress made of flossum silk; it was luminescent in the subdued lighting of the ballroom, casting an angelic halo about her. He was admiring her from across the table, and his tie was too tight at his throat.

They were at this ball as guests of honor for once, instead of as gate-crashers. It was only fair; this wedding celebration never would have come about if Ambassador John Smith and his wife Lady Rose (they had assumed, and he hadn’t corrected them) hadn’t intervened in the civil war between Princess Aline and Lord Tutilo’s people.

Rose stood with a swish of her skirt. “Come on, let’s dance.”

His eyes had darted away from her at the first sense of movement and were now staring into the crowd. “Ohhhh, but the nibbles are coming.” 

“You can have nibbles after a dance,” Rose grinned. 

“The best ones’ll have gone,” he persisted.

“I’m not backing down,” Rose said. “Come _on_. I did not get sewn into this dress to sit in the corner all night. Let’s show these royals how to really bust a move.”

“’Bust a move’?” He raised a single, eloquent eyebrow.

She laughed. “I may have had a coupla of those Mixatori Zuzu drinks. What’s that fruit called that they stick on the edge of the glass?”

“A _couple_? One of those things is enough to strip paint!”

“Hey, I’m a London girl. We know how to hold our liquor. Now _come onnnn_. You’re not going to deter me.”

“But I can’t dance!” He gave her his best puppy eyes.

“Sure you can! I’ve seen you bouncing around the TARDIS, Velvet Underground blaring from the speakers, after you think I’m in bed.” Her grin widened. “You used to know how to jitterbug, and I’m sure you haven’t forgotten in the past six months.”

“This regeneration has two left feet, ‘m ‘fraid,” he tried one last, desperate feint.

“Unh-uh. Not buying it. Besides, we’re guests! We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves! How do you think Aline and Tutilo will feel if they see us sitting around and being unsociable? Let’s go, hubby. Let’s dance!” She grabbed his hand and yanked him from the chair, dragging him past the servants with their trays of elegant nibbles, through the posh crowd of lords and ladies in their very fine clothes, and into the space cleared for the dancers.

A slow tune — something like a waltz — had just begun. Rose didn’t miss a beat; she stepped in closer, pulled up the hand she still held, and placed her left on his shoulder. She smiled up at him as he took her waist in hand, sweeping her into the graceful dance with confidence and aplomb. 

She imagined watching them from afar: he tall and straight with perfect posture, she a swirling nimbus of light and color. She had never felt so stylish, so fashionable, so classy. She squeezed his hand and laughed.

“This is a dignified dance,” he chided her, unable to repress one of his sideways grins. “There’s no laughing in dignified dances.”

“Bugger that,” she retorted with another laugh. Her tongue poked out between her slightly uneven teeth, and his smile widened. 

The music changed with a fluid transition into something even slower, more soothing and intimate. _About as close as this world comes to an R &B ballad_, Rose decided, and had to hold back another out-of-place giggle.

She let go of his hand, and it was clear he wasn’t expecting that; he stumbled in mid-step, arm aloft and holding nothing. But then she was leaning in, draping her arms around his neck and pressing close to his chest. 

He felt her breath against his collar. She could feel the steady drumbeats of his hearts through the skin and fabric. Sometimes she could forget what he was — that he wasn’t a human, that he was almost a millennia in age, that this body was only the newest in a long line. When they were running in and out of danger, when he was spouting off some impossible-to-understand jargon at fifty thousand words a minute, when he was standing at the edge of a terrible decision (lives in his hands, sometimes their own), she never forgot that he was a Time Lord, the Oncoming Storm, the last of the planet Gallifrey. 

But then there were the quiet moments. There had been dozens of days when the most exciting decision had been which café to stop at for tea, or which room of the TARDIS should be tidied up (sometimes she wondered if they should find a maid, there were _so many rooms_ , hundreds she still hadn’t explored). In those calmer moments, times he may have once labeled _domestic_ with a semi-sarcastic sneer, he was just the Doctor. Just a man, who had a tendency to hum while he worked, and left things lying about on the floor, and had never fully grasped the concept of the coat rack by the door. A man who liked sour pickles and banana splits and loved whipped cream on his coffee. Who knew all the words to _**Hello, Dolly!**_ and who read Harry Potter and who sometimes forgot to tie his shoes when he was in a hurry. 

She could forget his otherworldliness when they were arguing over the crosswords in the paper or watching the History Channel (even though he tended to shout out corrections, half the time). 

Even today she had forgotten, when his bowtie was crooked and she had to straighten it; when he couldn’t make up his mind on what to get for dinner and she had ordered for him, as impatient as the servant; when they were dancing together, so far away from the other couples as to be alone in their own world…

It was the feel of his two hearts, beating so close to hers (solitary in _her_ chest) that reminded Rose that he wasn’t like any other man she’d known. That there would never be another man like this one in her life.

His hand at her waist was still there, and the hand she’d dropped was pressed to her left shoulder. He was humming softly along with the music, swaying slightly as she filled his arms. She was wearing a new perfume, something the Princess’ waiting women had misted her hair with as she was dressing for the ball, and he took a deep breath to savor it. Not quite the scent of her name, but a close substitute. 

He had known the truth of things for some time now. How long was hard to pinpoint exactly, even for a Time Lord. And it had taken some getting used to, these thoughts and this knowledge. A part of him had tried to push them away; a part of him knew how this would all end, in one shape or another. But another had held them just as tightly as the other pushed, and he knew it was a futile fight now. He was hers — it was a fixed fact, unchangeable. No amount of running would change it; he could never double back on his own timeline to alter what Rose now meant to him.

He wanted so many things, all at once. He had never felt more alive, had never felt so like a human, with wishes for a stable life and a chance to grow old with the one he loved. Those wishes saddened him even as they elated him. He kept putting things off, holding back, afraid that now was not _exactly_ the right time, all the while afraid that he was waiting too long, that his caution would only rob them both. 

The Doctor wanted to show her everything beautiful in the universe, everything magnificent and breathtaking, to give her back what she had given him. And he wanted to lose himself in her smile, forget everything when her skin brushed his, hold her like this through the centuries…

“Do you like the dress?” she murmured against his shoulder. Her fingers brushed against his neck and he had to struggle to catch enough breath to answer. 

“It’s rather nice,” he said, and he knew his voice had squeaked a bit. 

“Mum would _die_ if she saw it. Bet she’d say it was something Princess Di would wear.”

“No doubt.”

“This is a nice song.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Aren’t you glad I made you dance now?” 

His hand was sliding down her back, and the feel of it through the thin fabric made her skin shiver.

“Do I really need to answer that?”


End file.
